Field of the Invention
Example embodiments relate generally to a single unit small, outdoor low-power cell able to support both metro cell outdoor (MCO) and metro radio outdoor (MRO) operations.
Related Art
In telecommunications, small, low-power cells are designed to supplement and/or replace larger macro base stations, especially in heavily populated urban areas where space is at a premium. To that end, conventionally there are two broad classes of small cells: metro cell outdoor (MCO), and metro radio outdoor (MRO).
As shown in FIG. 1, a conventional MRO 10 includes a radio card 2 which may include a digital processing radio processor 6 (containing such algorithms as Peak Limiter and Digital Pre-Distortion for radio performance) and dual common public radio interfaces (CPRI) 4 (providing digital communication to the radio with standard messaging and data, where dual connections are provided for redundancy as well as daisy-chaining with other radios). The radio card 2 may also include a radio on card transmitter (TX RoC) 12 for transmitting modulation, and a radio on card receiver (RX RoC) 14 for receiving demodulation. MRO 10 may also include a backhaul module 18 with dual backhaul interfaces 16 connected to fiber lines 22, where the backhaul interfaces 16 may be CPRI rates 3 through 7 for radio applications, those these interfaces 16 may optionally support gigabit ethernet (GigE) for cell applications (see for instance the configuration shown in FIG. 2). CPRI interfaces 4 of the radio card 2 may be connected to the backhaul interfaces 16 of backhaul module 18 via CPRI lanes 24 carrying CPRI signals that may be included in connector 8 (note that these lanes 24 may optionally be serializer/deserializer (SERDES) GigE for cell applications, as shown in FIG. 2).
As shown in FIG. 2, a conventional MCO 30 for modem and radio processing may include a radio card 2 and backhaul module 18 with similar components as described in FIG. 1 (and therefore those components are not again described here). However, in contrast to FIG. 1, MCO 30 may include a modem 48 connecting backhaul module 18 to radio card 2. The modem card 48 may include an Ethernet switch 32 and base band controller 28 for long-term evolution (LTE) processing. The Ethernet switch 32 may be used to direct Ethernet packets (packets conforming to IP protocol) internally within modem 48. Specifically, Ethernet switch 32 may include Ethernet port interfaces 42 (see ports P0 and P1) which terminate Serial Gigabit Media Independent Interface (SGMII) signals (i.e., IP protocol data) carried to/from Ethernet switch 32 and backhaul interfaces 16 via SGMII SERDES lanes 46. Ethernet switch 32 may also include Ethernet port interfaces 40 (see ports P2 and P3) which terminate SGMII signals carried to/from SGMII interfaces 36 of base band controller 28 via SERDES SGMII lanes 38. The SGMII interfaces 36 may be serial gigabit media independent interfaces used to transport control and data packets to the network. Base band controller 28 may also include internal CPRI core interfaces 34 that send/receive CPRI signals to CPRI interfaces 4 of radio card 2 via SERDES lanes 26, where base band controller 28 may convert CPRI signals to SGMII signals and vice versa.
Due to the structural differences between the hardware configuration of the conventional MRO 10 and MCO 30, both types of equipment must be utilized in the field in order to provide metro radio services and metro cell services to user equipment (UE) of a wireless network.